Google Inc. (GOOG) said it would change how Chinese users access its Internet search service after the Chinese government threatened to revoke the company's license to provide online content in that country.

It's unclear whether the government will approve the change and renew Google's license, which the company said expires on June 30.

The move comes three months after Google stopped self-censoring its Internet search results in China, after complaining in January that it had been hit with a cyber attack that it said came from that country. China's own Internet filters now censor Google's searches.

Google had been automatically redirecting users of Google.cn, which is based in mainland China, to a Hong Kong-based site, Google.com.hk, that doesn't censor search results.

But the Chinese government has told the company that approach was 'unacceptable,' according to a Monday post on the company's blog.

In response, Google said over the next few days it would stop the automatic redirect. Instead, visitors to Google.cn will be able to click on an icon that transports them to a new version of Google.com.hk. On the new site, users can access some services that had once been powered by Google.cn, such as product search and text translate, which don't require self-censoring by the company.

The main Internet search engine on the Web page would still yield unfiltered results via Google.com.hk.

The company said it had submitted its Internet license renewal application based on the changes.

'This new approach is consistent with our commitment not to self censor and, we believe, with local law,' wrote David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, on the company blog. 'We are therefore hopeful that our license will be renewed on this basis so we can continue to offer our Chinese users services via Google.cn,' he wrote.

A movie that gets fans to stand on one leg and flap their arms would hardly seem like a platform for a lesson in geopolitics. The 1984 version of "The Karate Kid" owes its iconic status, in large part, to its timeless themes of teenage anxiety, courage and moral redemption -- not to anything it might tell us about the United States' role in the world.

But when paired with its summer 2010 remake, the two movies offer a parable on the transformation of the global economy, the end of the American century and the changing balance of power between the United States and Asia. Between Jackie Chan's sly digs about global warming and Jaden Smith's status as a refugee of the U.S. economy, you can almost feel the world's center of gravity shifting.

Rewind the Betamax to 1984 and you'll recall that, back then, California was still the promised land, the place where the film's teenage protagonist, Daniel LaRusso, and his mom had moved from New Jersey to start a new life. It was also the place to which the family of Daniel's Japanese mentor, Mr. Miyagi, had immigrated years before.

The original movie's America was a land of exterior allure and interior motion, a place that allowed an old Japanese karate master and an Italian American kid from Jersey to form a life-altering friendship. It was the melting pot at its most potent.

It was also an America halfway through the Reagan years, a superpower at the height of its Cold War influence but still coming to terms with its own strength, still grappling with the proper uses of force. Between oil shocks and inflation, the 1970s and early 1980s had not been great for the economy. But if the United States worried about imports, trade deficits and currencies, it was Japan that provoked concern.

Interwoven with crane kicks and Cobra Kais, the movie offered some subtle moralizing on U.S. conflicts of the past half-century: Miyagi was not just any Japanese immigrant, but a World War II hero who had fought against his native land on America's behalf and whose wife and son had died in childbirth in a U.S. internment camp. Meanwhile, the bullies who antagonized Daniel were trained by a Vietnam veteran whose merciless approach to martial arts contrasted with Miyagi's karate-as-life-lesson approach. A corny device, but also laden with overtones of "Vietnam bad, World War II good."

In hindsight, this was not just a coming-of-age flick, but a uniquely American film that adroitly captured national dynamics, circa 1984.

Jump to the new version. Japan -- diminished on the world stage by a lost decade of economic stagnation, an aging and contracting population, a once-mighty yen facing marginalization -- has disappeared from the story.

U.S. interests in Asia now revolve around China, and the movie has been set in Beijing in what amounts to a two-hour-plus advertisement for the country, featuring stunning landscapes, smog-free skies and a Forbidden City void of police. (Perhaps the $5 million in funding from the Chinese government, together with permission to film in the country, helped shape the outcome? That's a question for Jaden's dad, Will Smith, one of the producers.)

Key plot dynamics are reversed. America is no longer the land of opportunity. The boy protagonist, Dre Parker, has left the economic mayhem of urban Detroit. He and his mother have been transferred by an unnamed car company from a failing factory in Michigan to a presumably thriving one in China. No more escaping to the surfer 'burbs of California. Presumably no jobs are there, either.

Instead it is all the way to an apartment complex in downtown Beijing. As Dre's mom announces, China is now home. This is no temporary ex-pat gig, it appears, but a full-blown inversion of the immigration patterns that defined the modern global economy.

It's an improbable reversal that speaks directly to the American anxieties of 2010. If the United States is no longer a beacon for ambitious immigrants -- and indeed is exporting bright young families -- maybe it is in decline.

China, it would seem from the movie's perspective, is clearly the future. Dre, thumbing through a dated book about the country, expects to find nothing but old Fu Manchu characters and crumbling buildings. Instead he is awed by the sparkling Olympic village, the cute young women, the parks buzzing with activity -- tai chi, soccer, basketball, music. It seems like everybody in China has an outdoor hobby.

As in the original, the boy is beset by bullies, and there's still a malevolent martial arts teacher. Various bits of dialogue and key scenes are retained from the original, and the remake is still a fun ride on a young-meets-old, East-meets-West and good-beats-bad level.

But it tells a different story.

Any about subtext are dispelled by Mr. Han, the Mr. Miyagi successor played by Hong Kong-born martial arts crossover star Jackie Chan. Han turns out to be not just the building handyman, but a full-fledged kung fu master. (This remake might be better titled "The Kung Fu Kid," because karate, more associated with Japan, has been replaced by the Chinese martial arts discipline.)

For all we know, Han might also have been advising the Chinese government at the Copenhagen climate talks last fall. He is, at any rate, a handyman with an environmental conscience.

When the new Americans complain of a broken water heater in their apartment, he explains that they only have to flip the switch and wait half an hour before showering, then turn the heater off.

There's a switch? They seem puzzled. In the United States, hot water is always just there.

Put in a switch, Han lectures, and save the planet.

There's a blunter moment as well. Like Miyagi in the original, Han plays briefly at trying to catch a fly with a pair of chopsticks -- but then abruptly pulls out a flyswatter and smashes the insect.

There's little doubt where the flyswatter was made, but by the end of the movie one might wonder: Was that a joke or a warning?

2010年6月24日 星期四

Vietnam's usually docile National Assembly has mounted a rare display of independence by voting down a controversial $56bn high-speed rail project linking the capital Hanoi with Ho Chi Minh City in the country's south.

通常温顺的越南国会否决了一个有争议的高速铁路项目，展现少有的独立性。该高铁项目计 划投资560亿美元，将连接首都河内和南部的胡志明市。

Nguyen Sinh Hung, the deputy prime minister, and the transportation minister had staked their prestige on the project, which was scheduled for completion with Japanese aid by 2035.

越南副总理阮生雄(Nguyen Sinh Hung)和交通部长均把自己的声望押在这个项目上。该项目原计划在日本援助下，于2035年竣工。

The plan was derailed when only 209 of the 493 deputies voted for the project in a ballot that required majority support. Vietnamese law mandates that all projects with budgets over $1.9bn get Assembly approval.

One of the deputies most critical of the project, Nguyen Minh Thuyet, said the vote was a watershed for the legislature. “It shows the Assembly has become more and more independent, and more serious in its work.”

But analysts cautioned the rejection was not necessarily a sign of a permanent strengthening of democratic governance or separation of powers in the Communist party-ruled country. “Certain ministers will lose prestige, but not the government,” said Nguyen Tran Bat, chairman of the Investconsult Group in Hanoi. “Ministers will need to prepare projects more carefully before submitting them to the Assembly.”

Opponents were critical of the project's potential to raise the national debt, as well as the sketchy projections for usage. The proposed 1,600-kilometre trajectory was also much longer than the 800-kilometre limit at which transit analysts say high-speed rail was competitive with air travel.

Mr Rudd resigned from the leadership at a caucus meeting on Thursday rather than force the party to a ballot. The challenge reared after a push late last night to oust Mr Rudd, driven by the factional power brokers within the Labor party concerned about his plummeting popularity.

Mr Rudd will be the first Labor prime minister to be dumped by his party before he could complete a term in office.

在澳大利亚历史上，陆克文成为首个尚未完成任期就被自己政党抛弃的工党总理。

Mr Rudd, ranked as one of Australia's most popular prime ministers in his first two years in power after his election in 2007, has seen his standing badly damaged by a series of policy mishaps over climate change and refugees.

陆克文于2007年当选总理，最初两年被评为澳大利亚历来最受欢迎的总理之一，但在气 候变化和难民问题上的一系列政策失误，使其声望大损。

He has also been hurt by a backlash led by powerful local mining companies over the government's decision to impose a so-called superprofits tax on the resources sector.

澳大利亚政府计划向资源行业征收暴利税的决定，引起国内各大矿业企业带头的反弹，这也 损及他的地位。

The well-funded campaign against the tax, led by some of the country's richest people in tandem with mining giants such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, has seen Labor support plummet in resource-rich states such as Queensland and Western Australia.

With an election expected later this year, the party's factional bosses, who represent the interests of both union powerbrokers and different state-based groupings, appear to have given up on Mr Rudd's regaining popularity.

Death Toll Rises in Southern China

Published: June 20, 2010

Zhongshan, CHINA — A week of pounding rain in southern China has left at least 132 people dead and scores of others missing as officials evacuated 800,000 people living alongside swollen waterways, the state media reported on Sunday.

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The unrelenting storms have drenched eight provinces, triggering landslides that swept away 31 people in Fujian, left the picturesque city of Guilin thigh-deep in muddy water and inundated 1.2 million acres of cropland, reported China Daily.

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, at least 86 people are missing, dozens of whom were swept away by landslides earlier in the week. Officials have so far estimated the damage at $2.1 billion, with at least 156,000 homes damaged or destroyed.

The rains, which began last Sunday, are ravaging a region that just months ago was coping with a severe drought.

Television images on the state broadcaster showed rescue workers tossing ropes across an angry river to help those stranded on the other side and other workers using a dinghy to ferry a group of kindergartners to safety.

Throughout the week, the storms have wrecked havoc on travel throughout the country, forcing the cancellation of hundreds of flights and stranding thousands of passengers at airports as far away as Beijing.

The tally of those missing in landslides include 23 construction workers buried at the site of a hydroelectric dam early Tuesday in Sichuan Province and 24 people in a bus and a minivan that were sent plunging into a river Monday in Fujian Province.

On Saturday, the Ministry of Civil Affairs issued a warning for 80 rivers whose levels had surpassed dangerous points.

Weather forecasts suggested the crisis would only worsen in the coming days, with storms expected through the weekend.

“There will be heavy rain over the next three days, and flood-control work will face enormous challenges,” the National Meteorological Center said in a statement, warning that the rainfall in the south was as much as three times greater than normal.

陆克文面临下台压力

LABOR RUDD CLINGING ON TO POWER 'S LEADERSHIP HANGING BY A THREAD

The political future of Kevin Rudd, Australia's prime minister, is hanging by a thread after key powerbrokers in his Labor government concerned about his plummeting popularity forced a challenge to his leadership.

If she ousts Mr Rudd, the Wales-born Ms Gillard, a lawyer who has long been in politics both as an adviser and MP, will become Australia's first female prime minister.

如果吉拉德成功把陆克文拉下马，她将成为澳大利亚首位女总理。吉拉德出生于英国威尔 士，是一名律师，长期涉足政坛，先后担任顾问和议员。

Mr Rudd, ranked as one of Australia's most popular prime ministers in his first two years in power after his election in 2007, has seen his standing badly damaged by a series of policy mishaps over climate change and refugees.

陆克文于2007年当选总理，最初两年被评为澳大利亚历来最受欢迎的总理之一，但在气 候变化和难民问题上的一系列政策失误，使其声望大损。

He has also been hurt by a backlash led by powerful local mining companies over the government's decision to impose a so-called superprofits tax on the resources sector.

澳大利亚政府计划向资源行业征收暴利税的决定，引起国内各大矿业企业带头的反弹，这也 损及他的地位。

The well-funded campaign against the tax, led by some of the country's richest people in tandem with mining giants such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, has seen Labor support plummet in resource-rich states such as Queensland and Western Australia.

With an election expected later this year, the party's factional bosses, who represent the interests of both union powerbrokers and different state-based groupings, appear to have given up on Mr Rudd's regaining popularity.

South Korea: An Asian Tiger That Can Stay the Course?

When Chung Un-Chan speaks of a nation once "paralyzed by anxiety and uncertainty," it's hard to imagine that the prime minister of South Korea is indeed referring to his own country. Exuding pride and confidence today, Korea is among the world's largest economies. It's also at the forefront of the global economic recovery, making one of the strongest rebounds registered by any member of the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Prime Minister Chung and other government and business leaders gathered at a recent Wharton Global Alumni Forum held in Seoul to take stock of the country’s economic and industrial growth, and to discuss where Korea will go from here.

For many South Koreans, the country's brushes with economic disasters in recent times have been a journey "that carries deep emotions," the country's prime minister, Chung Un-Chan, acknowledged in his keynote address at Wharton's recent Global Alumni Forum in Seoul. The event served as a poignant reminder of the host country's remarkable resiliency: The last time Wharton held a gathering in Seoul was 1999, as the country reeled from the Asian currency meltdown. Back then as today, Chung said, Korea "surprised the world" and recovered far faster than expected. Now, the country needs to prove that its economy is more shock-resistant than ever.

What does France have that South Korea doesn't? The Eiffel Tower, for one thing. It's the type of national icon that public relations and marketing experts in the East Asian country dream of having. But while Korea is unlikely to whip up its equivalent of an Eiffel Tower -- or a Sphinx or Golden Gate Bridge -- any time soon, it is trying hard to raise the country's profile around the world. That's a goal that could take years to achieve, as Yoon Dae Euh, the inaugural head of the country's Presidential Council on Nation Branding, noted at May's Wharton Global Alumni Forum in Seoul.

Today's "greenomics" -- the economics of being environmentally friendly -- has companies struggling to balance their eco-ambitions with hardcore business pressures. During a panel discussion at the recent Wharton Global Alumni Forum in Seoul, experts noted that greenomics isn't just about corporate profit and loss statements. Rather, it requires a symbiotic relationship between the public and private sector, non-profit and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and consumers. Yet, as one expert noted, these groups are a long way away from helping the business world reach the day "when we no longer need the term 'greenomics' because it's embedded into everything we do."

South Korean central bank governor Kim Choong Soo is no stranger to controversy. When Lee Myung Bak, the country's president, called on his former economic adviser to be head of the central bank for a four-year term starting in April, many of the government's critics cried foul, saying that the appointment of such a close political ally compromises the financial institution's independence. In an interview with Knowledge@Wharton following his speech at Wharton's recent Global Alumni Forum in Seoul, Kim discussed his views on central bankers' independence as well as the hotly debated reforms he said the international foreign reserve system so sorely needs, among other topics.

Obama Says Afghan Policy Won’t Change

Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Obama, with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Gen. David H. Petraeus and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, announced his removal of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as the top commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday and his appointment of General Petraeus to lead the war effort there.

Mr. Obama said he had done so not out of personal insult over a magazine article featuring contemptuous quotes from the general and his staff about senior administration officials, but because it showed the general had not met standards of behavior for a commander, which threatened to erode trust among administration and military officials, as well as undermine civilian control of the military.

“War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or president,” Mr. Obama said. “As difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for our national security.”

General Petraeus, who holds overarching responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as the head of the United States Central Command, would be required to leave his current post to take on his new appointment, which must now be confirmed by the United States Senate. Mr. Obama stressed that the change in leadership did not signal a shift in his overall war strategy in Afghanistan, where thousands of new American troops have been arriving in recent months among increasing casualties and growing questions about the progress of the war.

“This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy,” Mr. Obama said.

The reshuffle injected new uncertainties into relations between the United States and the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who had urged American leaders to let General McChrystal remain in place.

“We are not opposing his successor, but we would prefer that General McChrystal come back,” Ahmed Wali Karzai, the influential half brother of Mr. Karzai, said earlier Wednesday, suggesting that the Afghan government was realistic about the possibility that General McChrystal would be replaced.

General McChrystal had proved to be one of the few Western leaders who could work well with President Karzai, building trust and traveling to tribal meetings with him, and personally apologizing when Western military actions resulted in major civilian casualties, which have been a source of deep anger for Afghans.

In a brief statement, General McChrystal said he supported the strategy in Afghanistan and had resigned out of a “desire to see the mission succeed.” His dismissal did not alter his rank, but it was unknown what role he would next play in the Pentagon, if any.

General McChrystal and Mr. Obama met for about 20 minutes earlier in the day, after the general flew from Afghanistan to Washington on Tuesday amid a growing furor over the article, which Rolling Stone magazine posted on its Web site on Tuesday after it had leaked to other news outlets.

The article quoted General McChrystal and his aides speaking critically of nearly every member of the president’s national security team, dismissing Vice President Biden as “Bite Me”; calling the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, a “clown”; and disparaging other top officials.

The firestorm over the article was fueled by increasing doubts — even in the military — that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise. The remarks also laid bare the disarray and enmity in a foreign policy team that is struggling with the war.

In replacing General McChrystal, Mr. Obama decisively showed that he remained the ultimate decision-maker on military matters and would not tolerate insubordinate behavior or internal rifts among his top officers.

But the decision also invited criticism that Mr. Obama was shaking up his military command at a crucial moment in the conflict, when coalition forces are preparing to try to take control of the country’s second-largest city, Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban.

Beyond that, Mr. Obama’s war strategy is in many ways a McChrystal strategy. The general devised the plan, which called for thousands of extra troops to fight the insurgency and, perhaps more important, create a sense of security for the Afghan people.

But Mr. Obama said the mission in Afghanistan, where the United States now has more than 90,000 troops, remained unchanged by General McChrystal’s removal. “We have a clear goal,” Mr. Obama said. “We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum. We are going to build Afghan capacity. We are going to relentlessly apply pressure on Al Qaeda and its leadership, strengthening the ability of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to do the same.”

The Afghanistan team has suffered many internal conflicts, including complaints from the American ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, about Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. In one episode that dramatized the building animosities, General Jones, the national security adviser, wrote to Ambassador Eikenberry in February, sympathizing with his complaints about a visit Mr. Holbrooke had recently made to Afghanistan. In the note, which went out over channels that were not secure, officials said, General Jones soothed the ambassador by suggesting that Mr. Holbrooke would soon be removed from his job.

The Jones note prompted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to complain to Mr. Obama, and her support for Mr. Holbrooke has kept him in his job.

The infighting has been made more severe by the increasingly perilous situation on the ground. Violence in Afghanistan is on the rise. The mission to pacify Marja and Kandahar is far off track. And the effort to create a viable Afghan government is increasingly in doubt because of widespread corruption. Criticism is mounting on Capitol Hill, even among the president’s backers, and many allies have announced that they are looking for the exit, with others expected to do the same in the coming months.

There has been vigorous debate within the administration about how to proceed in Afghanistan, but in the article General McChrystal and his aides did not overtly criticize administration policy.

Rather, the differences revealed were personal. One administration official described Mr. Obama as being particularly furious at a characterization of him in the article as not seeming “very engaged” during that first White House meeting.

Over all, the article depicted General McChrystal at the head of a small circle of aides engaged in what came close to locker-room trash talk as they discussed foreign policy, the French, their allegiance to one another and their own concerns about course of the war. The civilian communications adviser who set up the interview, Duncan Boothby, has resigned.

Helene Cooper reported from Washington and Jack Healy from New York. Reporting was contributed by Dexter Filkins from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Thom Shanker and Mark Landler from Washington.

2010年6月20日 星期日

China Signals a Gradual Rise in Value of Its Currency

Published: June 19, 2010

HONG KONG — China announced on Saturday evening that it would allow greater flexibility in the value of its currency, a move that could deflect growing international criticism of its economic policies and defuse one of the greatest sources of tension between Beijing and Washington.

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The statement, by China’s central bank, was the clearest sign yet that the country would allow its currency to appreciate gradually against the dollar. World leaders are due to meet next week in Canada for economic talks, and China’s currency policies had appeared a certain source of conflict.

The United States has been leading a chorus of countries urging China to let its currency fluctuate. Many members of Congress believe China’s exchange rate policy gives it an unfair trade advantage, and a movement has been growing to take retaliatory trade action if China did not make an adjustment.

President Obama and the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, immediately praised China’s action. “China’s decision to increase the flexibility of its exchange rate is a constructive step that can help safeguard the recovery and contribute to a more balanced global economy,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. The European Commission also said it supported the move.

But it remains to be seen whether the move will significantly rebalance the global trade picture. The People’s Bank of China was cautious in its statement about how far its currency, the renminbi, might fluctuate, warning explicitly that “the basis for large-scale appreciation of the RMB exchange rate does not exist.” Chinese officials said the renminbi would move in relation to an unspecified basket of currencies, not just the dollar. Experts said that depending on how the system was designed, China could avoid rapid fluctuations.

Mr. Geithner alluded to this in a statement, saying, “This is an important step, but the test will be how far and how fast they let the currency appreciate.”

The first sign of how much currency appreciation will be tolerated is likely to come Monday morning, when the Chinese government will set the initial trading band for the value of the renminbi in Shanghai trading.

China has kept its currency value low since mid-2008 by pegging it to that of the dollar and not letting it fluctuate. Any trend in the renminbi’s value would have been higher without the peg, making China’s goods more expensive to foreign consumers and possibly slowing the country’s export-based economy.

In its statement Saturday, the central bank said that the Chinese economy was strengthening after the crisis and that it was “desirable to proceed further with reform” of the currency. Tellingly, the announcement was made almost simultaneously in Chinese and in English, a rare occurrence, and Chinese officials advised foreign governments beforehand that they were about to take a new stance on currency policy, according to an American official.

Though China said its action was based on the interests of its own economy, it has been under rising pressure from the United States, the European Union, Brazil and India. Mr. Obama had held repeated conversations with President Hu Jintao over the last year or so, the most recent of which was two weeks ago, and Mr. Geithner traveled to China for meetings last month.

China has handled currency policy gingerly, fearing that its people might see appreciation as a step taken in response to foreign pressure that might not be in the national interest.

For Mr. Obama, China’s currency has been a particularly sticky problem. He also has been leaning on Beijing to help contain the nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, to act as one of the main engines for the world economy, and to moderate its efforts to gain exclusive access to raw materials around the world needed to fuel China’s huge growth.

But Mr. Obama’s leverage has been minimal, and in the end it may have been the threat of a Congressional bill’s protectionist actions against Chinese products that convinced Beijing that it had to begin to free its currency.

That threat had been gaining ground in Congress among lawmakers convinced that China was keeping its currency value artificially low to the detriment of the American economy.

“China’s currency practice has cost American jobs and hurt American ranchers, farmers and small businesses,” Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Saturday. “Today’s announcement is a welcome first step to help keep American businesses competitive and create more American jobs.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, however, cautioned that unless China gave further detail to its plan, “we will have no choice but to move forward with our legislation.”

If the renminbi were to rise significantly, goods from the United States and other countries could eventually start displacing Chinese exports. That could help fuel economic growth in many of China’s trading partners, while braking growth in China, which has been expanding so fast that inflation is now accelerating.

Rising wages after recent labor unrest, combined with a stronger currency, may also make China a more attractive consumer market for international companies. But this could help Europe more than America, whose exports to China have been weak and concentrated in a few categories like aircraft, turbines and soybeans, while European companies have been more successful in selling high-end consumer goods there.

For China, a stronger renminbi will increase the buying power of its consumers and could make gasoline and other imported commodities seem less expensive. Faced with spreading labor unrest, particularly in the auto industry, the government has started to make an energetic effort to improve the standard of living of industrial workers.

But many economists inside and outside China have argued that currency appreciation is in China’s interest most of all. The country has been spending nearly one-tenth of its annual economic output to buy Treasury notes and bonds and other foreign securities while printing and selling renminbi, all in an effort to prevent the renminbi from rising against the dollar.

The renminbi has already risen with the dollar by 15 percent against the euro in the last two months. That has made Chinese officials nervous about the future competitiveness of Chinese sales to Europe, the biggest market for Chinese exports.

Cui Tiankai, a vice foreign minister, said on Friday that the value of the renminbi was not a subject for global discussion, the latest in a series of remarks by Chinese officials indicating strong nationalistic sensitivities about currency policy.

But people familiar with Chinese currency policy making have been saying for two months that the Chinese leadership agreed in early April to a change of direction. A devastating earthquake in western China in mid-April followed by worries about economic turmoil in Europe delayed action on the decision.

David E. Sanger and Sewell Chan contributed reporting from Washington.

China's secret media

Chinese whispers

Not believing what they read in the papers, China’s leaders commission their own

Jun 17th 2010

IN A country where independent information-gathering is kept in check, what China’s leaders know and how they know it matters hugely. A recently leaked speech by Xia Lin, a senior editor at Xinhua, China’s government-run news agency, suggests that even though press controls have been somewhat loosened in recent years, leaders still rely heavily on secret reports filed by Xinhua journalists. Other evidence indicates this fault-prone system is actually gaining in importance.

In the speech last month Mr Xia revealed that the news agency’s public reports about an eruption of ethnic rioting in the far-western region of Xinjiang last July had played down revenge attacks by Han Chinese against members of the region’s biggest ethnic group, the Uighurs. Mr Xia said it was only after reading a classified “internal reference” report on the reprisals that China’s president, Hu Jintao, cut short an overseas tour. A summary of Mr Xia’s remarks was posted online by one of the audience. Censors removed it and tried to stop it circulating elsewhere.

The summary has not been verified. But filing secret bulletins to the leadership is one of Xinhua’s crucial roles. Many of China’s main newspapers also have classified versions covering news considered too sensitive for public consumption. They do not rely on secret intelligence, but merely report on issues that in most other countries would be the staple of journalism: public complaints; official wrongdoing; bad economic news; and foreign criticism.

In recent years China’s open media—which, thanks to the withdrawal of government subsidies, are now more commercially driven—have also been straying into these once-forbidden realms. But despite the growing assertiveness and reliability of at least a handful of open publications, the secret media have shown no sign of withering away. Some of them have gained a new lease of life—secret-sounding information sells well. China’s rapid adoption of the internet has even provided rich material for a whole new genre of classified reporting. And China’s leaders appear to be lapping it up.

The outbreak of SARS, a deadly lung disease, in 2003 exposed critical weaknesses in the “internal reference”, or neican, system. Xinhua’s first SARS report, for leaders’ eyes only, did not appear until February 9th, by when there had been some 300 cases and five deaths, dating back to November 2002. Only two days later did the leadership release the news and tell the World Health Organisation. China’s secretiveness and dilly-dallying were widely blamed for the spread of SARS.

It was not until April 20th that China’s leaders allowed the press to report the outbreak freely. But even as the number of open reports jumped, so too did Xinhua’s neican coverage. Between April 1st and July 10th, the news agency issued more than 2,700 public SARS-related reports in Chinese. It also filed more than 1,000 secret ones, and over six hours’ worth of classified audio-visual material.

In 2003 the number of comments written by leaders in the margins of Reference Proofs, a secret bulletin on international affairs for very senior officials rose by 88% compared with the year before. Six were by President Hu. Xinhua compiles such statistics assiduously to measure the impact of its work. An even more secret version of the bulletin, Reference Proofs (Supplementary Sheets), published more than three times as many reports as in 2002.

Internet usage in China soared after SARS, which boosted the appeal of virtual encounters and e-commerce. In parallel there was a surge in demand from China’s leaders for rapid updates on what the “netizens” were up to. Xinhua compiles these into another laboriously titled bulletin, Proofs of Domestic Trends (A Digest of Online Public Sentiment). In 2007 the agency’s yearbook reported a 15% growth in the number of such reports and a 50% increase in leaders’ comments on them. It seems unbothered by the paradox: public internet chat is rehashed in top-secret reports, divulging the contents of which could result in a lengthy prison term.

The plethora of information on the internet deemed too sensitive for China’s traditional media has spurred the growth of neican. Last July the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, the People’s Daily, launched a new weekly journal for senior officials, called Online Public Sentiment: Three Rurals Internal Reference.

The similarity of its title to Xinhua’s far more restricted digest might well be calculated to give the impression that it is offering inside information on the dissatisfaction-plagued “three rurals”, which is the party’s way of referring to peasants, villages and agriculture. A sample edition available online is humdrum, but its aura of secrecy commands a subscription rate two or three times that of a standard (and far more informative) weekly magazine. A Chinese editor familiar with Reform Internal Reference, a secret weekly for low-level officials and academics, says much of its contents could be found online.

Chinese leaders themselves sometimes seem to take neican reports, produced as they are by the party’s own faithful, with a pinch of salt. In a commentary in the People’s Daily in April, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, revealed that leaders sometimes had to sneak out incognito in search of unadulterated information.

The open press, subject as it is to a host of censorship directives, is usually even less reliable. At the party’s five-yearly congress in 2007, Xinhua issued more than twice as many neican reports as it had at the 2002 event. In 2009 a senior provincial official called for efforts to ensure that everyone eligible for Xinhua’s neican did subscribe. There must be no “blank spots”, he said. In the realm of the censored, half-censored content is king.

Dalai Lama Says Talks Would ‘Inconvenience’ Japan’s Government

June 19, 2010, 12:22 AM EDT

By Stuart Biggs

June 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, said he has no plan to request official talks that would “inconvenience” Japan’s government and that his lecture tour in the country is “non-political.”

The Dalai Lama, 74, arrived in Japan yesterday to lecture on Buddhism at a temple in central Japan’s Nagano prefecture, and in Yokohama. He spoke to reporters today at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in Tokyo.

Overseas receptions of the Tibetan religious leader have angered China’s government, which regards him as a separatist since he fled to India in 1959. China objected to the Dalai Lama’s meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in February and canceled a China-European Union summit after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with him in 2008.

“This is a non-political visit, so I have nothing to ask or discuss with the government,” the Dalai Lama said today. “I don’t want to create any inconvenience to anybody.”

China opposes outside pressure on how the country runs Tibet, which was brought under its rule in 1950.